Taste Test Game: How to Get Your Kids Eating New Foods

Tired of hearing “yuck” and “no” to everything but chicken nuggets and mac ‘n cheese?

Looking for a way to get your kids to try new foods without resorting to nagging, bribery or deception?

Let your kids be food critics for a day.

In this article, I’ll show you a creative and fun way to introduce your kids to new flavors, textures and foods that can lead to a lifetime of healthier, more adventurous eating.

Why Encourage Children to Try New Foods?

When you turn food experimentation into a game instead of an obligation, your kids will be more willing to try new things. And they may just discover that there’s a lot more to mealtime than peanut butter and jelly.

You’ve probably got a memory like this:

Maybe you were at a party or on a trip or eating at a buffet and there was some new food you’d never tried before. It may have been funny looking or intimidating, a little scary, but you decided to be brave and give it a taste. A tentative bite, a few chews and a swallow… It was delicious—an amazing new discovery! A food you’ve enjoyed ever since.

Wouldn’t you love to help your children have that kind of experience, to overcome their fear or reluctance of trying new things, to develop an open-minded and adventurous feeling about food that will get them to take that first tentative bite?

DW The Picky Eater is a classic story about a little girl who refused to eat spinach.

And to be rewarded with the discovery of a new food that they absolutely love?

Keep reading and I will show you how.

You Will Need

Foods for tasting (see #1: Choose Your Experiment for some ideas of foods to choose)

Glasses of water

Lots of spreading knives and teaspoons

Cutting knives you are comfortable to let your kids use (for older children only)

Boards for preparing foods and some plates or bowls to put foods onto

Scarf or blindfold for each child

PDF adjective list (download below)

Preparation Time

Five minutes to clean surfaces and gather ingredients

A trip to the store—take your children along to include them in the entire process

Chop or peel items beforehand if children are very young. This keeps knives out of reach during the activity

If you choose to compare textures, cook some items beforehand (see #1)

Activity Time

Between 30-60 minutes, depending on how much they get into it

Location

Your kitchen or dining table or a kitchen countertop

Introduction to Taste Testing

Food critics and famous chefs—even the character in Ratatouille—didn’t wake up one day as experts at tasting foods. They learned by trying all kinds of foods and finding different words to describe what they tasted.

It takes practice to taste different flavors and learn to combine them.

The best chefs can taste their recipes and know exactly what to add to make it perfect because they have tasted those flavors many times before—both when it was good and when it was terrible.

Children (and many adults, too) don’t have that experience. Many kids are naturally suspicious of unfamiliar foods, and quickly categorize them as ‘yummy’ or ‘yucky,’ sometimes before the foods have passed their lips.

Good tasters are not afraid to taste something they don’t like. They see it as part of the adventure. Without tasting a few disgusting mouthfuls, you won’t know how to tell when something tastes amazing.

Our taster is not sure what she thinks of this mouthful. But she’s trying it anyway.

#1: Choose Your Tasting Experiment

There are lots of different tasting experiments you could try. Here are some ideas:

Exotic fruits with strange names

Foods that start with a certain letter of the alphabet

Sausages on sticks with dipping sauces from different countries

Fruits and vegetables that are all in season this month

A single fruit or vegetable in different states (e.g., grated, steamed, roasted, fried, mashed and puréed)

Find something your children already like and build upon it. If they’re crazy about mac ‘n cheese, test different types of pasta and sauces—some familiar and some more unusual.

You could also choose a food your kids are curious about. For this article, we tasted cheeses with different bases and accompaniments because it made my children feel like real food critics. They have seen posters for cheese and wine tasting events and have wondered why French chefs in cartoons always seem to wax lyrical about cheese!

We decided to taste cheese, just like the professionals do.

Start with something familiar and build up to more adventurous flavors. Cheese was a great starting point. We started with flavors they’re already comfortable with, which enabled them to be a bit braver later in the experiment.

Our ingredients for our ‘cheese tasting’ session. We purchased a couple of extra cheeses, but all of the other items were in our cupboards already.

Compare the flavor to something it tastes like. Having trouble with a description? Try to think of something it tastes similar to or reminds you of. For example, Jacob thought that Parmesan tasted like cheddar mixed with a smelly sock.

Another way to describe taste is to use comparative words. Is it spicier, fresher, soapier, blander, crunchier or crumblier than another thing they have tried? Jacob thought halloumi tasted ‘denser than cream cheese’ but ‘not as sharp as feta.’

Focus on words to describe why you like or don’t like a food. Anna didn’t really like feta. She thought it was ‘sickly,’ ‘squishy’ and ‘too salty.’ But she loved cream cheese because ‘it made the bread moist’ and it was ‘really creamy and soft.’

#4: Try Different Textures

Food’s texture can have a big effect on whether children like it or not. Prepare foods in various ways to test different textures.

We heated the cheese to see how cooking changed the taste and texture. This was the main reason we made the effort to get halloumi cheese, because it holds its shape and browns without melting.

The halloumi (left) stayed whole, the feta (top) bubbled a bit, the cheddar and parmesan melted to a crisp and the cream cheese (bottom right) bubbled to lumps.

Describe how different textures affect the flavor. We discovered that halloumi is ‘less rubbery and squeaky’ when cooked, that cheddar and parmesan take on a ‘homely’ and ‘meaty’ edge when browned and that cream cheese becomes ‘even creamier but with crispy bits.’ Feta didn’t seem to change flavor at all.

Trying to decide how cooking the cheese changed the way it felt and tasted.

#5: Experiment With Combinations

You’ve tried your basic food. You’ve experimented with different textures. Now the fun really begins. Add accompaniments and try lots of different combinations.

We tried our cheeses with toast, crackers and rye biscuits, and with a range of vegetables, fruits, jams, relishes and sauces to liven them up.

The kids get creative with combinations.

Encourage children to try something more than once, combined in a different way. If they hate dill pickle with cheddar and rye, suggest they try a smaller sliver of pickle with cream cheese and toast. Even if they still don’t like it, they can discover how the taste of every item changes when paired with different things.

Anna was surprised to learn that her favorite crackers (Cheddars) overpowered her favorite two toppings (cream cheese and cucumber) and they didn’t taste good together. But switching those toppings onto rye crackers worked perfectly.

Jacob was nonplussed to find that not EVERYTHING tastes better when you add a pickle to it.

Have fun with it! Once you have made lots of combinations, try making some for each other. The kids made a huge plateful for their Dad on his lunch hour and had great fun watching him eat some gruesome combinations and try to work out what they were.

#6: Try a Blind Taste Test (optional)

Finally, you could try a blindfold tasting experiment. When you can’t see the food you’re eating, you have to really taste it to work out what it is.

If you think your kids could try this without freaking them out, it’s great fun. But don’t push it on the first session if your children are still quite suspicious and you think it might spoil the session. An alternative would be for you to wear the blindfold and let them feed the food to you.

Make plates of identical food for each tester while they’re out of the room. Then wrap a scarf around their heads to cover their eyes and sit them down carefully. You have to place each item into their fingers so they just have to lift it to their lips.

My kids were quite competitive, both trying to guess the ingredients before the other did. It was so much fun, they completely forgot that they might not like some of the ingredients. Both chewed and guessed the ingredients correctly before deciding whether they liked the taste or not.

Trying foods blindfolded takes away your preconceptions.

Taste testing is a tried and true technique to get reticent children to try new foods. Making it into a game with a little healthy competition makes most children forget their fears.

We use this technique in schools with picky eaters, who will sometimes only smell or lick a food to guess what it is, but will be proud that they got that far.

If your children are reluctant to eat fruits and vegetables, you can print free food guessing strips for each month and conduct a blind taste test with different seasonal vegetables and fruits throughout the year.

Some Final Thoughts…

I hope this gave you some ideas for your own food tasting experiments. If your children get the bug for trying things, try to go with the flow. If they ask to mix ketchup into their mayo or dip a pickle in their yogurt next time you eat lunch, let them discover for themselves whether that’s a good idea or not.

Remember that your ultimate goal is to remind your children that food is supposed to be enjoyable. Whatever lip-smacking or gagging goes down during the tasting is ok as long as everyone has fun doing it.

What do you think? Do your children like tasting new foods? Which foods could you try that they haven’t explored yet? Share your ideas and pictures of your taste test in the comments below.

Joanne Roach runs The Foodies Books which helps parents, caregivers and teachers get young children growing, cooking and eating a wide variety of healthy and tasty foods. Other posts byJoanne Roach »

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000723584156 Nancy White

I will have to try this

http://www.thefoodiesbooks.com/ thefoodies

Great! You could also do something very similar using different cold meats instead of cheese – some ham, prosciutto, cold hot dog sausage, pastrami etc. You could use the same breads and accompaniments and just swap the cheese. Let us know how it goes!

EmilyQuestions

Love the list of food adjectives – it makes it almost like grown-up wine tasting! And the blindfolded taste test has got to be hilarious! Thanks for sharing, Joanne – this is a great post!

http://www.thefoodiesbooks.com/ thefoodies

Thanks Emily! My kids definitely loved using the adjectives (they had to look some of them up) in posh voices and sounding like TV critics!

http://www.mykidsadventures.com/ Jennifer Ballard

Thanks Joanne. The expressions on their faces are hilarious. I’ll have to try this with my picky eaters. Maybe with fruits or veggies.

http://www.thefoodiesbooks.com/ thefoodies

Thanks Jennifer, they really did have an interesting time! If your children are not keen on fruits and veggies remember to mix plenty of the things they already like in with the ones they’re reticent about, so there’s lot of comfortable familiarity which will stop them getting too apprehensive. If they go into it knowing they’re going to like at least half of the foods they will be able to relax and have a more open spirit about the ones they’re going to need yucky adjectives for. Have fun!